


The Kitchen Gods

by takethembystorm



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Cooking, Cooking Lessons, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff, Minor Food Porn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6536227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adrien needs an independent cash flow; the Dupain-Chengs need someone to work part-time at the bakery over the summer.</p><p>Marinette mostly needs someone to keep her heart from stopping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kitchen Gods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [megamegaturtle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/megamegaturtle/gifts).



“So Napoleon’s leaving,” Tom says one night over dinner.

“Just because he’s a pompous arrogant windbag doesn’t mean you ought to call him names, dear,” Sabine says.  “Are you firing him?”

“Fine, fine,” Tom says, scooping a helping of vegetables onto his plate, “ _Richard_ gave me his notice.  He’s leaving in eight weeks for America.”

“Well, that’s a mercy,” Sabine says.

“It would be if Clarisse wasn’t leaving end of next week,” Tom says, with a glance towards Marinette.  “We still don’t have any applicants for her position?”

Marinette sips moodily at her mug of watered-down wine and wishes that it was something stronger as she tunes out her parents’ conversation.

This had not been a good month.  First she’d had to fight those jerks in administration—why on earth had she become class president again?—until she’d wanted to strangle them with their own ties, then once that had been resolved Chloe had decided to throw her weight around to get another half-dozen procedural roadblocks thrown in her way, the selfish little twit.  And then there’d been homework to catch up on and finals to study for and final projects.  Whoopee.

Ladybug hadn’t had much better of a month.  There’d been a brief lull in activity going into June, but as if to make up for that, the following weeks had consisted of nothing but attack after attack after attack.  Then there’d been those inconveniently scheduled press conferences and the excuses she’d had to make so that Ladybug could make a momentary appearance.

Oh, and on top of that, Chat Noir had turned out to be Adrien Agreste.  As in, love and light of her life, kind, sweet, utterly dependable, utterly devoted, adorably shy, completely gentlemanly Adrien freaking Agreste, who is wholly in love with Ladybug.

Okay, so maybe that last point wasn’t so bad.  At least he hadn’t started screaming and run away when he’d seen the girl behind the mask.

But it’s over, at least, and the long summer months stretch away in front of her.  There’s lycèe like a bunch of bollards at the end of that road, of course, but she can ignore that for now.

“I’ll put out a notice, then,” Sabine says.

“Just put out a part-time position for now, we can worry about a full-time position later,” Tom says.  “Mari, do you know if any of your friends are willing to work for some spare cash?”

“No, Papa,” Marinette says.

“Well, could you please ask around for us?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Thank you, Mari.”

* * *

“So, any plans for the summer, _purr_ incess?” Adrien—he’s Chat, too, she forces herself to remember, he’s just Chat, whom she’s spent an inordinate amount of time pressed up tightly against _no, no, bad brain bad brain_ —says as he lounges on the terrace later that evening.

“One more pun and I throw you off the roof, kitty,” Marinette says as she knits, her needles clicking gently together.  “And it’s just princess now, not ‘my Lady’?”

“Princesses outrank ladies,” Adrien says, his tail flicking idly against her leg.  “So, are you doing anything this summer?”

“Mostly just hanging out,” Marinette says, trying not to flush or scream or flail about at the contact.  “You?”

“I convinced father to let me stick around,” Adrien says.  “Aside from a few photoshoots, I am entirely at your disposal, Princess.”

Marinette snorts to cover the start of a squeak as his tail winds lightly around her ankle, the metal tip and leather-like material cool against her exposed skin.  “M-Mind working for minimum wage for a few weeks?” she says as jokingly as she can manage.

“ _Any_ thing for you, Princess,” he says, his voice a low and rumbling drawl.

“Papa needs a cashier,” Marinette says, kicking lightly at his tail; he unwinds it from her leg with a murmured apology.  “Part-time.”

“Sounds _purr_ ”—he catches sight of her expression—“er, perfect to me.  Who do I talk to?”

“Well, the bakery’s open seven to six, Monday through Saturday,” Marinette says.  “Come in anytime.”  She eyes him with a small and she’s sure nervous-looking smirk.  “Don’t expect any special favors just because you’re cute.”

Adrien flushes red under the mask and looks away.  Marinette one, Adrien zip.  She’s got this in the bag.

“Why do you want this job, anyways?” Marinette asks.  “You’re worth, like, a billion euros.”

“My father is worth several million,” Adrien corrects.  “And the money I make from modeling is kept in a trust fund, and is inaccessible to me until I graduate university.”

“My point still stands,” Marinette insists.  “You can afford anything you want.”

Adrien grins sunnily at her.  “Perhaps I just want to spend as much time as I can with my Princess,” he says.

Marinette sees the strain at the corners of his eyes, and doesn’t press the issue for the rest of the night.

* * *

“You’re hired.”

Adrien blinks a few times.

“I’m sorry, what?” Adrien says to Tom.  Tom is sitting before him, his expression stern and solemn, his massive hands folded between them on the table.

“I said, you’re hired,” Tom repeats.

“You aren’t going to ask me about my work experience or anything?”

Tom sighs.  “Normally I would,” he says, “but normally I don’t know a thing about the person walking in through the door.  You, on the other hand.”  He shrugs.

“Look, Mr. Dupain,” Adrien insists, “I don’t want any special treatment—“

“Son, you’re running a cash register for the summer, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” Tom says.  “And my employees call me Tom.”

He slides the contract and a pen over to Adrien.  “You’ll be making twelve and a half per hour and be taking over Clarisse’s shift, which runs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, seven to three.  You get up to an hour for a meal break and two fifteen minute breaks, pick whenever during your shift, but be sure that someone else is there to cover you.  You’ll start Monday next week.  Show up maybe half an hour early.”

“Mr. Dupain, er, Tom,” Adrien tries again, but his protest wilts under Tom’s steady stare.  Adrien picks up the pen.

“Where?” he sighs.

Tom taps several blank lines on the contract.  “Here, here, and here.”

Adrien signs.

* * *

“Mama and Papa were cheering after you left,” Marinette tells him later that night on patrol.  “Something about ‘phase one complete’ or something.”

“Your parents are weird,” Adrien says.  “Nice, but weird.”

* * *

“Thanks,” Adrien says to the Gorilla on Monday morning.  “Can you pick me up around three-thirty?”  The Gorilla grunts in affirmation.

Adrien nods, shuts the door, and watches as the Gorilla drives off.  Then he walks around to the back door, knocks, and waits.  There’s some muffled basso shouting a second later, and the sound of pounding footsteps as someone descends from upstairs.

“Hey,” Marinette says as she opens the door a moment later, breathing a little heavily, her cheeks flushed a light pink with exertion.  She reaches up and brushes a stray lock of her loose hair behind an ear.  “You’re early.”

“Yeah,” Adrien says, his hand automatically going up to scratch at the back of his head.  “Your dad asked me to show up early.”

“Really?” Marinette says.  “Oh, right, he likes to show the new employees around.”

There’s another moment’s silence before she says to him, “Well, come in.”

The warming summer air is replaced with a sudden wave of confectionary heat as Adrien steps into the bakery, redolent with chocolate and vanilla and caramel and cinnamon and rich cream and butter and under it all the solid, yeasty weight of fresh bread.  He’s a little astounded that drool doesn’t start pattering from his mouth as he follows Marinette through the bakery.

“I’ll take Plagg,” Marinette murmurs to him, “if that’s all right with you.  Don’t want him complaining while you’re working, and Tikki’s been wanting a reunion for a while anyways.”

“Sure,” Adrien says.  “Thanks.”

“I like Marinette better anyways,” Plagg says as the spirit zips out from within Adrien’s shirt and into the open purse which Marinette offers up.

“Don’t be mean, Plagg,” Tikki says as the spirit floats out and gives Adrien’s face a quick hug.  “It’s good to see you again, Adrien.”

“Hey, Tikki,” Adrien says.  “Yeah, Plagg, be nice to me or you’re getting nothing but Velveeta for a week.”

“You wouldn’t,” Plagg says with lazy reassurance.

“Fine, _I’ll_ make him give you nothing but Velveeta for a week,” Marinette says, tweaking Plagg’s nose playfully.

The spirit gulps audibly, then falls silent.

“Marinette!” Tom bellows from somewhere in the bakery; Tikki zips into the purse a heartbeat before Marinette closes it and Tom pokes his head around the corner.  “Ah, there you are,” Tom says.  “Your mother wanted to talk to you before you left.”

“Left?” Adrien says as Tom disappears back around the corner.

“Oh, yeah,” Marinette says, “Alya and I were going to go shopping today.”

“It’s not far,” she adds hastily, seeing the look on his face.  “Plagg can make the trip in a minute, maybe two if he moves quickly, well, Tikki can and I assume that Plagg can too and you won’t be going anywhere and I did not think this through I’ll just go now.”  She scurries off and clambers up the stairs.

“Adrien!” Tom calls, sticking his head back around the corner.  “Right, we have about ten minutes, let’s give you the tour.”

The bakery is compact and crowded with hardware, but Tom moves through the mess gracefully, his long apron swishing.

“Fridge in the back, next to the delivery area,” he points out before pivoting around a depleted pile of flour bags.  “All the dry stuff goes here, ovens, mixers, scale.”

“Er, Mr. Du—“

“What did I say about that?”

“Tom, with respect, why are you showing me this?” Adrien asks.  “I’m just going to be up in the front, aren’t I?”

“True enough,” Tom says.  “But I like my employees to have a sense of the whole thing, and in the event that we need to evacuate, it helps to know where everything is, where all the hot things and things you could trip over are so you can avoid them.”

A car horn blares suddenly, and Tom nods.  “Right,” he says, “head back up to the front, Clarisse should be here soon, she’ll show you the ropes.  For now you’ll be observing and taking over for her when she’s on her break.”

Adrien trots obediently back to the front; outside, a queue is already forming.  He stands and waits for a few minutes more as more people show up and quiet grunts filter in from the back of the bakery.

Finally he sticks his head into the back.  He watches Tom as the big man hauls several enormous bags into the kitchen, before he steps up next to him and picks up a bag, slinging it over his back with a grunt of effort.

“Careful with that, son, you’ll blow out your spine,” Tom warns as Adrien staggers a little under the weight.

“’s fine,” Adrien grunts.  “I’ve lifted heavier.”

“Right.”  Tom grabs the bag and lifts it easily, tucking it under an arm.  “If you do want to help, then help me with the sugar, milk, and eggs, they’re on that pallet over there.  Better to make more trips than pick up too much at once, mind you.”

“Sugar goes next to the flour, right?” Adrien calls to Tom.

“Next to the _cake_ flour,” Tom says.  “When you walk in, it’s bread flour, cake flour, sugars, gluten, on your left, don’t mix them up.  Always double-check the labels.”

“Got it,” Adrien says.  “Everything else goes into the fridge?”

“Use your best judgment,” Tom says from outside, an amused lilt to his voice.

“Right.”

“Oh, before I forget, grab an apron,” Tom says.  “To your right as you head in from the front.”

Adrien glances over his shoulder as he hefts a sack of white sugar.  He places the sack carefully on the tabletop, then walks over, donning a clean white apron with the bakery’s logo embroidered on the breast and tying the strings around his waist.  Tom glances at Adrien as he walks back and grabs another bag of flour.

“A shorter one, son,” Tom says.  “And take off your overshirt, just put it over your t-shirt.”

“Sorry,” Adrien says, as he puts the apron back on.

“So long as you learn,” Tom says.  “You want it to hang to just above your knees.”

Between the two of them, everything gets put away within a few minutes.  Clarisse, a tall, broad woman with long, curling hair and skin the shade of mahogany arrives a few minutes after that, rushing through the door at a run.

“Sorry I’m late, Tom,” she pants as she grabs an apron and puts it on, tying up her dark hair in a ponytail before wrapping it into a tight bun.  “Overslept.”

“That’s fine,” Tom says.  “Clarisse, this is Adrien.”

Adrien can feel his face heat as Clarisse stops dead in her tracks and stares at him.

“You didn’t tell me that you hired Adrien freaking _Agreste_ ,” she says to Tom.

“Just Adrien, please,” Adrien says.

“Holy crap,” Clarisse goes on.  “Why are you getting a job here?”

“Clarisse,” Tom says warningly.  “He’s just another employee.”

“Yeah, sorry, Tom,” Clarisse says, still staring.  “Wow, um.”  She holds out her hand.  “Clarisse.”

Adrien shakes her hand.  “Adrien.”

“You wouldn’t mind if I asked you for your autog—“ she begins.

“Not while you’re on the clock,” Tom says, pulling a tray from the massive oven.  The bakery fills with popping noises as the baguettes cool instantly upon exposure to the air, their crusts crackling merrily.  “Show him the ropes."

“Yes, Tom,” Clarisse says meekly.

* * *

It takes only two shifts before his bad luck kicks in.

On the whole, Adrien enjoys cashiering.  It’s not much more boring than modeling when there isn’t anyone around—and sweet Jesus there are so many people around—and if a lot of them gawp at the sight of him manning a cash register they at least remember to pay him after maybe thirty seconds of staring.  It’s a plus that Tom and Sabine are good employers and generous people.  He somehow doubts that he’d be offered a free meal and all the leftover bread—when there is leftover bread—that he can stuff into a purse anywhere else in Paris.

By Saturday, though, the word has apparently gotten out to his fan club.

“Oh, boy,” Clarisse grumbles as she surveys the crowd—the predominantly teenaged crowd, pressing faces to the glass in an attempt to see in—outside.  “Of course this has to happen on my last day here.”

“Tom?” she calls over her shoulder.  “Issue!”

“Moment!” Tom calls back.  Adrien stares glumly out the front.

Adrien feels Tom step up next to him.  “Oh, dear,” Tom mutters.

“I am so, so sorry about this,” Adrien says.

“So long as they’re paying customers, I don’t mind,” Tom replies after a thoughtful moment.  “And even if they’re just standing around, they’ll get hungry soon enough.”

“And if they brought snacks?” Clarisse says.

Tom shrugs.  “We have measures we can take,” he says, and walks back as a timer in the back _dings_ cheerily.

“Look, Adrien,” Clarisse says as they tidy up and prepare to open up for the day.  “I know I’m only supposed to be supervising you today, but I can take over for part of your shift if you want.”

“It’s fine,” Adrien tells her.  “I can handle it.”

* * *

I can handle it, Adrien repeats to himself in his head three hours later.  I can handle it.  It was worse than this for the first few weeks when I started going to Francois Dupont.

He accepts a credit card from a stout, middle-aged woman as he rings up her purchase.  Both of them glance sidelong at the girl who’s been lounging over the display case for the past half-hour, gazing dreamily at him with the occasional sigh.

“Thank you,” Adrien tells the woman, handing back her card and a bag filled with her selected pastries.  “Have a good day.”

“ _I’d_ help you have a good day,” the girl sighs quietly.  Adrien twitches.  It’s not the best come-on he’s ever heard, and considering the semi-glazed look on her face he suspects that it was said more in the depths of some conjugal daydream than it was an actual directed act of flirting.  It’s just that this is the sixth time she’s said something like that.  It’s getting mildly creepy.

“Hey!” someone—Adrien glances upwards, it’s a guy who doesn’t look much older than him—shouts in his direction.  “When does your shift end, Adrien?  I need to know when to make the restaurant reservations!”

“Adrien—“ Clarisse begins from just behind him.  Adrien cuts her off with a quiet shake of his head.

“Oh, _fuck_ this,” Clarisse growls.  “I’m responsible for your ass, I’ll be damned if I—“

Her voice trails off into incomprehensibility as she stomps into the back.

“Thank you,” Adrien says, handing a bagged baguette to a tall, long-limbed Algerian woman that he vaguely remembers from Monday.  She drops a few euros into the tip jar and gives him a sympathetic smile.

“Good luck,” she tells him, before she turns and leaves.

“You could get lucky with _me,_ ” the girl sighs.

“Excuse me,” Sabine says from about six centimeters behind Adrien; he jumps and whirls in surprise.

“Not you,” she says gently to him.  Her expression sets in a mask of congeniality as she turns to the girl.  “Excuse me,” she says, more loudly.

The girl blinks, her eyes focusing on Sabine.  “I’m sorry?” she asks.  “Who are you?”

“I’m his boss,” Sabine says.

“Oh,” the girl says.  “Okay.”

“Excuse me,” Sabine says again as the girl turns her attention back to Adrien, “but you are standing in my bakery at the moment.”

“Okay?”

“Since you have been doing so for”—she glances sideways at Adrien.

“Almost an hour now,” Adrien supplies meekly.

“—an hour,” Sabine continues, “with your only significant activity being the obstruction of foot traffic in _my_ bakery and the harassment of one of _my_ employees, I am well within my rights to take action.”  Her smile widens, and Adrien edges away from Sabine a step.  Everyone else in the bakery freezes.  “Buy something, then leave.  Or just leave.  I’m not particularly picky.”

The girl straightens to her full height, staring pointedly down at Sabine.  Sabine stares back, still smiling.

The girl wilts.  “I’ll take an éclair,” she mumbles, her stomach gurgling a little.

“Excellent choice,” Sabine says sunnily.  Her stare sweeps out across the rest of the bakery before she turns to Adrien, pats him gently on a shoulder, and walks away.

Adrien plucks the éclair from its refrigerated case and slips it into a waxed paper bag.  “Four euros, please,” he says, ringing up the purchase.

The girl pays in cash.

* * *

“Your mother,” Adrien tells Marinette as the two of them play video games in his room later that evening, “scares the piss out of me.”

“Mmhm,” Marinette says absently as she executes a mask-wearing bandit with a fizzling stick of dynamite tied to a throwing axe.  “She does that.”

* * *

It isn’t until next Wednesday that Adrien’s bad luck hits home again.

He arrives that day to see Tom holding the bakery’s phone to his ear with a frown.

“Mmhm,” he grunts.  “I understand.  No, it’s all right.  All right.  All right, thanks for informing me.”

“Is something wrong?” Adrien asks as Tom hangs up.

“Well, you’ve met Richard, right?” Tom says.

Adrien nods.  He’d had the pleasure of running into the man once, when he had to head back to inform them that his horde of fans, dwindling by the day but present nonetheless, had just bought out their entire stock of pates a choux.  Richard had, upon recognizing him, immediately tried to endear himself by explaining how he was such a fan of his father’s work, and could he just give Adrien a few suggestions for his next show, and how he ought to do such and such and so on and so forth until Tom had clapped a massive hand on his shoulder and shoved him back into the kitchens.

Adrien had filed him away under “people I might need to sic the lawyers on”.  That man’s smile and manner had _not_ been right.

“What happened?”

“Hit by a truck,” Tom says.  “He’s in stable condition, but he’s going to be in hospital for the next few weeks and unable to work for the next few weeks after that.”

“It’s going to be just you and Constance, then?” Adrien asks.

“Not if I can help it,” Tom says grimly.  He gives Adrien a quick, calculating glance from head to toes.  “You’re early enough,” he says finally.  “Come with me, have some breakfast.”

“Tom, really, it’s all ri—“

Tom’s hands slap over Adrien’s biceps, and Adrien finds himself lifted into the air until he’s face-to-face with Tom’s blank, unamused expression.

“You’re turning sixteen this year, right?” Tom says.

“Yes,” Adrien says.

“Then you’re still growing, and you need to eat.”

“Tom—“

“I can practically see your damn ribs, son,” Tom says.  “This is through your shirt, mind you.”

“Tom, please, my dietician is going to throw a fit—“

“Your dietician,” Tom says flatly, “knows sh—knows nothing.  You already come up to my shoulder but you weigh about as much as a couple of grapes, son.  I know there’s a certain standard that you models need to hold to but this is absurd.”

Adrien gives up.  “Yes, Tom,” he says.

“And we’re not going to tell your dietician.”

“Yes, Tom.”

“Or Nathalie.”

“Yes, Tom."

* * *

Adrien tries to tune out the quiet argument Tom and Sabine are having while he steadily chews his way through a slice of toasted baguette thickly spread with jam.  Beside him, a sleep-muzzy Marinette sips from a mug of coffee.

“I can’t help,” Sabine says.

“Honey, please,” Tom says.

“It’s not a ‘please’ matter, Tom,” Sabine says firmly.  “I just got contracted for three different businesses, all of them rush orders.  I’m going to be working past midnight for the next month, at least, probably longer.  And then I need to update our books, too.”

“Damn,” Tom sighs.  “We’re going to need to reduce hours, then.”

Sabine frowns slightly.  “You and Constance managed the last time when before we hired Richard.”

“That was before Constance had her child,” Tom says.  “Had to reduce her hours, remember?”

“I thought she was back full-time,” Sabine says.

“That was before her husband had to go to Taiwan on business.  He won’t be back until the fall.”

“We’ll be eating mad cow, then,” Sabine says.  “I’m sorry.”

“Circumstances,” Tom says with a shrug.  “We’ll manage.”

“Um, excuse me?” Adrien says.

Tom and Sabine both look at him.  “Yes?”

“Like, how complicated is this going to be?” Adrien asks.  “Is it just that you need someone to help mix things and stuff like that?”

“Richard handles most of the breads and most of the basic baking,” Tom says.  “Constance does the cakes, the decorating, and helps me with the more delicate pastries.  So nothing too complicated.”

Adrien gives a little shrug.  “I could help.”

Now Marinette is staring at him.  Adrien flushes and shrinks in a little under the sudden attention.  “The cooks let me help out,” he says.  “I never got the hang of actual cooking, but I know how to bake.  A little.”

Tom and Sabine glance at one another.  Tom raises an eyebrow; Sabine crosses her arms across her chest.  Tom purses his lips a little; Sabine cocks her head to one side.

Finally Tom says, “It’ll be longer hours.  Full-time.  Probably overtime, actually.”

“I can convince father,” Adrien says.  “Most of my photoshoots happen on the weekends anyways.”

“I can babysit Constance’s daughter,” Marinette chimes in quickly.  “And I can help out in the bakery too.”

Tom looks between them, then sighs.  He glances up at Sabine, who does likewise.

“All right,” Sabine says.  “Adrien, stay after your shift and we can fix your contract.  There’s going to be a lot of regulatory stuff you need to handle before you can work with the actual food; I’ll forward that to Nathalie and she can help you with that.”

Tom nods at Marinette.  “Constance usually gets in early for her shift, I’ll call you down when she gets here and you can work out a schedule with her.”

“All right!” Marinette cheers.  Her smile turns worried as Adrien looks at her in mild bemusement.  “Um, I’ll just go uh, wash up or, something.”

* * *

A week and a half of hastily arranged classes and tests later, and Adrien finds himself yawning in front of the bakery’s back door at five in the morning.  Tom is waiting for him, and hands him a steaming mug of coffee.

“Drink up, son,” Tom says.  “You had a look at those recipes I sent you?”

Adrien nods, covering up a yawn.

“Good.  You’ll mostly just be watching what I’m doing for now, but I’ll be moving fast, so pay attention.  We should have you working mostly by yourself by the end of the week.”

“Will”—Adrien yawns again—“Will Marinette be joining us?”

Tom gives him a look laden with lines that Adrien completely fails to read between.  “That largely depends on whether she can get up or not.  Usually we have to physically haul her out of bed before eight, so maybe later.”

Tom ushers him inside with brusque motions as Adrien sips at the coffee.  “Pop quiz.  What’s proofing?”

“Letting the yeast”—Adrien yawns and takes a bigger gulp of coffee, wincing a little at the heat—“chow down on sugar and produce CO2.”

“Close enough.  Overproofing and underproofing?”

“When you let the dough sit for too long or for too little time,” Adrien says with a stifled yawn.  “The bubbles either break apart the structure too much or not enough.”

“Good.  How can you tell?”

“I let you do that.”

“Cheeky, technically correct.  How do I do that?”

“You”—Adrien searches for the words for a moment, then gives up and mimes placing the flat of his hand on something—“and feel the tension.”

“Good.  I’ll show you what an ideal loaf should feel like later, you’ll pick it up with a few weeks’ practice.  Where do I let the dough proof?”

Adrien points to the man-high silvery metal cabinets.

“How long do I proof my dough for?”

“Uh,” Adrien says, brow furrowing.

“Fine, how long do I proof my baguettes for?”

“Hour?”

Tom remains impassive.

“Hour and a half?”

“Good.  Then?”

“Form the loaf—loaves,” Adrien corrects, “form the loaves and set aside to rest for another hour.”

“Good.  Next?”

“Uh, slash the loaves—“

“Before that.  Where do you place the loaves?”

“Floured cloth.”

“Cotton or linen?”

“You use linen, the man you trained under used cotton.  Either works, it’s the thread count you care about.”

Tom chuckles.  “Remembered that bit of trivia, did you?  All right, how hot should the oven be?”

“As hot as it goes?”

“Wrong.  I can melt lead in my oven when I turn it up all the way.  The baguettes go in at 287 degrees.  How long do they bake?”

“Around twenty to thirty minutes.”

“Good.  Then cool for ten minutes before they go out front.”  Tom grabs a bag of flour and hauls it onto the counter, whipping out a utility knife and slicing a slit in the top.  “How much flour, water, salt, yeast?”

“Uh, a kilo of—“

“Ratios, son, ratios,” Tom says as the flour pours steadily into the massive bowl on the scale.  “Got to be flexible, what are the ratios we’re dealing with.”

“Uh, one hundred to sixty-five to”—Adrien hammers the numbers through his brain—“two to two?”

“Correct.  We’ll be making them in batches of thirty loaves each, so ten kilos flour.”  Tom glances over his shoulder at Adrien.

“Uh, six-and-a-half kilos water, two hundred grams salt and yeast.”

“Which goes in last?”

“The water?”

“You don’t sound sure,” Tom says, setting the bag of flour aside and reaching for a bag of salt and a brick of yeast.  He tares the scale and looks at Adrien.

“The water,” Adrien says more firmly.

“Good.  Why?”

“How much you need depends on the humidity.”

“Correct.”  Tom adds the salt and yeast, barely glancing at the scale before he hands the salt over to Adrien.  Tom grasps the bowl and hauls it over to the mixer before he tilts the head down into the powdery mass.  He glances over his shoulder at Adrien again.

“Well?”

Adrien blinks a few times at Tom.

“The water.  Give me my six-and-a-half kilos of water, son, hurry up.”

Adrien places his half-finished mug of coffee on the counter, grabs an enormous beaker, fills it up to the six-and-a-half liter mark, and hands it off to Tom, who starts the mixer and begins pouring in the water.  His eyes remain fixed on the inside of the bowl as the mixer starts chugging; without looking away he reaches up and switches it up to a higher speed.

“Right,” he says after a minute, “come here, Adrien.  This is what the dough should look like.”

Adrien leans over the bowl as Tom shuts off the mixer.  Inside is a sticky off-white mass of clumps and threads.

“It’ll smooth out the longer you work it,” Tom says to Adrien, handing him a timer.  “I’m going to leave this to you while I prepare a few other things.  Time how long it takes, note the setting on the mixer.  Stop it when you think it’s done.  Finish up your coffee while you do, you look like you need it.”

Adrien nods and starts the timer as Tom flicks the mixer on and bustles off.

“Done,” he calls to Tom after a few minutes, shutting down the mixer.

“How long did it take?”

“About seven minutes.”

“Hm.”  Tom comes up and looks down into the bowl.  “About right, but needs a little more time.  Go and wash your hands, son.  You trimmed your fingernails?”

“Yes, Tom.”

“Good.”

Adrien goes and washes his hands thoroughly as the hum of the mixer fills the bakery again.  He dries them with a couple paper towels and comes back just as Tom shuts off the mixer.

“Right,” Tom says, reaching down and pinching off a lump of dough.  He works it for a second in his hands before handing it to Adrien.  “Feel that, get familiar with it.”

“Isn’t there like, a windowpane test?” Adrien says as he prods the dough with a finger.

“I’ve never used it,” Tom says.  He takes the dough from Adrien and tosses it back into the mixing bowl, tilting the mixer head out of the way.  With practiced, brusque motions, he peels the dough away from the dough hook, then scrapes the dough from the mixing bowl into a smaller bowl off to the side.  “Open up the door for me, son.”

After a beat, Tom adds, “the proofer?”

Adrien hauls the door open as Tom places the bowl inside and pulls out another.  He tests the tension in the skin with his palm.

“Flour up the counter,” he tells Adrien as he does.  “Just a fistful of flour, mind.  Oh, and just dump the mug in the sink, I’ll take care of it.”

Adrien’s scarcely finished dusting the counter with flour before Tom hauls the bowl up and dumps the entire mass onto the counter.  It hits with a wet _thwmp_ and a puff of flour that dusts Adrien’s face.

“Too much,” Tom says as he pulls out a bench scraper and begins slicing out portions of dough.  “You’ll learn.  Flour up the cloth, and this time you don’t need to be shy with how much you put in.  You want to rub the flour in deep.”

Adrien starts working the flour into the cloth as Tom finishes dividing up the dough.  He glances over at Adrien, sighs, and walks over to the scale.  A minute later, the timer beeps quietly as Tom sets it to eight minutes before the whirr of the mixer fills the kitchen.  Tom tugs the cloth gently from Adrien’s hands and starts flouring it himself.

“Sorry,” Adrien says.

“It’s your first day on the job, son,” Tom says.  “I don’t expect perfection on day one.  If you’re struggling by day one hundred, that’s when I throw you out of the bakery.”  He holds up the cloth, turning it this way and that for inspection before placing it on a tray.  “That’s what it should look like.”  He flours another cloth, motioning for Adrien to follow suit.

“Now, I want you to watch while I form the loaves,” Tom says after five long, covered trays are lined up beside them.

Tom’s hands practically fly through the mounds of dough, turning twenty-nine lumpy masses into twenty-nine vaguely baguette-shaped loaves that get placed, swiftly and carefully, upon the cloth, the fabric pinched up in between them to separate them.

“I want you to try making this last one,” Tom says as the timer beeps.  He gets up, shuts off the mixer, and returns a moment later to find Adrien staring at the dough in a sort of panicked stupor.

“Fold it over itself,” Tom says patiently.  Adrien looks up at him.

Tom sighs and mimes the motion.  “Pull and roll,” he says, “gently.  Don’t overwork the dough.  You saw how I did it.”

Adrien hesitantly pulls and rolls the dough.  “Like that,” Tom says, “but push a little more with the heel of your hand—too much—right, right, that’s good.”

Tom watches as Adrien carefully rolls the dough out to length.  “Right, and stop.  Good.  Not bad for your first try.”  He slides the proto-baguette onto the cloth alongside its fellows and places the trays in a second proofer.

“Um, Tom?”

“Yes, son?”

“Could I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“I thought that you had to let the dough proof for an hour and a half first.”

“You do.”

Adrien’s brow furrows in thought again.  “You prepared them before I came,” he says slowly.

“Precisely.”

“Tom, with respect.”

“Yes?”

“When on earth do you sleep?”

“Sleep is for the weak.”  Tom hauls another bowl from the proofer, tests it, then dusts the counter and pours the dough out.  “Now, help me form the rest of the baguettes.”

Adrien loses count after baguette seventy-three, but by the time they’ve finished Tom is hauling the bowl they mixed when he first came from the proofer and dividing it up.  By the time those baguettes are finished, Tom is pulling the first batch of baguettes they’d formed from the other proofer and sliding them into the oven—when on earth had he turned it on?—one by one with a bread peel.

“So, we’re done?” Adrien asks as Tom sets a timer, sets aside the bread peel, and steps aside.

“For now,” Tom says.  Another timer starts ringing cheerily; Adrien glances over as Tom walks over to yet another proofer and opens it, pulling out yet another silver bowl filled with yeasty dough.

“Oh, wait,” Tom says, turning to Adrien with an evil grin.  “Now you get to help me with the pain de campagne.”

“And we’re kneading it by hand.”

* * *

“I cannot feel my arms,” Adrien groans as he lies spread-eagled on the terrace, Marinette’s feet resting on the small of his cat-suited back.

“Did you think that being a baker was easy?” Marinette says as she sips from a glass of lemonade.  She sets it aside, picks up her sketchbook, and clips a small LED lamp onto it.  She turns it on with a click and starts working on a design, her pencil _skritch_ ing across the paper.  “I used to help Papa in the bakery a lot when I was a kid, before we really got a big name and he was able to bring on more staff.  Still do sometimes.”

“No wonder you’re so buff,” he mutters.

“Damn skippy,” Marinette says.  “Wimp.”

“You have no sympathy at all for me, do you?”

“Of course not, you sissy,” Marinette says mercilessly.

“Princess,” Adrien whines.

“Oh, come on,” Marinette says, nudging him with a heel.  “You only did two batches of baguettes and three of pain de campagne.  And Papa handled most of the rest of the work.  _And_ poor Plagg is probably working overtime knitting your muscles back together right now.”

“So you admit that I have muscles,” Adrien says, rolling over so that he’s looking at Marinette upside down.  He shoots her a sunny grin; Marinette flushes in response and hides her face behind her book.

“I’ve seen better,” she mumbles.

“On whom,” Adrien purrs, drawing himself up next to her in a casual lounge.

“Me.  In the mirror.  Every day,” Marinette shoots back, flushing brighter.

“Oh, I do agree there,” Adrien says with a low chuckle.  Marinette whacks him lightly over the head with her sketchbook; it just makes him laugh harder.

The two settle out into a comfortable silence.  After a while, Adrien remarks, “It felt nice.”

“Hm?”

“Baking my own breakfast.  Making something good.  It felt nice.”

“It does,” Marinette says softly.

“Oh, how would you know, Princess?” Adrien says, flicking his tail playfully against her calf.  “I didn’t see you down there this morning, slaving away like the rest of us.”

“Go home, Adrien,” Marinette says, kicking lightly at him.  “You have an early day tomorrow.”

“No, no, I’m throwing down the gauntlet here,” Adrien says, grinning toothily, “I challenge you to a bake-off, tomorrow morning, just you and me.”

“I can’t,” Marinette says, a smile creeping across her own face.

“Really?  Why not?”

“I’m babysitting Constance’s daughter all week.”  She looks at him thoughtfully.  “I will challenge you come Saturday, though.”

“It’s a date,” Adrien purrs.  “Don’t back out on me now, Princess.”

“Don’t limp off and whine when I kick your sorry ass, kitty,” Marinette retorts.  “Now go home and sleep.  You looked terrible this morning.”

“My Princess does care,” Adrien says, putting a hand to his heart.

“Go _home_.”

* * *

Saturday rolls around.

Tom greets Adrien and Marinette at five in the morning with two enormous mugs of coffee.

“Adrien, I want you to handle the pain de campagne,” Tom says without preamble.  “Marinette, I need another three batches of baguette dough, then I want you to roll out the baguettes.  Once you’re done with that I need your help with the croissants and the pain au chocolat.”

“What do you want me to do once I’m done with the campagne?” Adrien asks, drinking down the coffee as fast as he can manage without scorching his throat.

“I’ll have Marinette train you on the croissants,” Tom says.  “If business is lighter than usual I’ll have Constance give both of you a quick refresher on basic cake batters this afternoon.”

“Mmm,” Marinette mumbles as she blows the steam away from her coffee before downing it in one long gulp.

That’s about as well as things go that day.

Adrien dismisses the first incident as happenstance, a mere consequence of the earliness of the hour.

Marinette finishes her first batch of baguette dough with quiet efficiency almost as practiced as her fathers’, and places it in the proofer.  As she starts on the second batch, she runs out of flour and tosses the bag aside onto the pile of depleted bags by the door.  As she’s walking past it towards the storeroom, her foot snags a loose corner of the bag, kicking it in front of her other foot as it swings forwards.

Things tangle.  Marinette goes down, with an almighty clash and clatter.

The rest of the morning, once Tom is satisfied that Marinette hasn’t concussed herself, passes without incident.  Adrien allows himself to think, for one fine moment, that this is as bad as his bad luck is going to get for today.

Not so much.

Business doesn’t lighten up, and when Francois, one of the other cashiers, calls in just after noon and informs them that he’s _so_ sorry but he’s going to be maybe an hour late, Adrien is forced back to the front, and then forced back to the back when Tom needs the extra pair of hands, and then back to the front to man the cashier and back and forth and back and forth.  Marinette, bless her, helps to keep the additional workload from being intolerable, but the both of them are still strained.

It comes to a head about five minutes before Francois arrives.

“Bread’s up!” Marinette shouts at him over the hubbub in the bakery.  Adrien excuses himself with a smile and scurries back to grab the first of a pair of trays laden with baguettes, slotting them into their baskets in the front.  As he’s scrambling to grab the second tray, Marinette hurries by with a sack of flour slung over one shoulder, bent almost double under the weight.  She’s looking more at the ground than forwards; he only notices her about half a second before he accidently elbows her in the ribs.  Marinette goes down with a grunt of surprise and the sack slides off of her shoulder and snags on the corner of a table.  The sack hangs there for a moment before the material tears under the strain, dumping several dozen kilos of flour onto Marinette’s head.

“Oh god, Marinette,” Adrien says, leaning down and helping Marinette up, brushing flour from her shoulders; she coughs and splutters she breathes in some of the fine powder.

“Here,” Tom says as he materializes next to the two, handing Adrien a dampened towel.

“Oh, Tom, I am so—“

“Enough of that, son,” Tom says.  “Accidents happen.  At least you didn’t push Mari into the mixer while it was running.”

A few gentle swipes with the towel cleans Marinette up enough that she can open her eyes again.  Tom brushes some of the flour from Marinette’s hair, then grimaces.

“Go upstairs and take a shower,” he tells her after a moment’s consideration.  “You’ll never get most of this mess out otherwise.”

“Papa—“

He throws up his hands in a dramatic display of frustration.  “Oh, to have martyrs for workers,” he cries.  He claps his hands down on their shoulders, his right on Marinette’s left, his left on Adrien’s right.  “Mari, get yourself cleaned up.  This is both advice from your father and an order from your boss.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Adrien, why were you back here?”

“Getting some more baguettes, Tom.”

“Go about your business, then.  I’ll clean up here.”

“Tom, I am so, so—“

“Work first, beg for mercy on hands and knees later,” Tom says, cutting him off.  “Go on, the both of you.”

With one last glance towards Adrien, Marinette heads for the stairs that lead to her home above and disappears up them, trailing flour.

Tom turns back to Adrien, his hands on his hips.

“I’m sorry,” Adrien mutters, keeping his gaze down.

“Francois isn’t here yet?” Tom says.

“No,” Adrien says.

“Once he gets here, I want you to go on your lunch break,” Tom says.  “Sabine’s made a bit too much and it’ll go to waste otherwise.  And before you protest, she _will_ come down and stare at you if you don’t.”

Adrien manages to repress the sudden flood of terror piss.

Francois rushes in a few minutes after what Adrien is deciding to call The Incident and reminds him, a little sulkily, that he’s under orders from Tom to go on his lunch break.  Adrien smiles, thanks him, and heads to the back, where Tom takes his apron and directs him upstairs.

Sabine is stirring something on the stove when he comes through the door.

“Adrien,” she says without turning.  “I’m just reheating the soup, can you please go and tell Marinette that lunch is ready?”

“Yes, Mrs. Ch—“

“Ah!”  Sabine holds up an admonishing finger.

“Yes, Sabine,” Adrien says with the slightest resigned sigh.

“She’s still finishing up her shower, I think,” Sabine says.  “Just go up and knock on the door.”

Adrien climbs the stairs, opens the trapdoor, and pokes his head into Marinette’s room.  He turns his head towards the sound of rushing water, coming from Marinette’s compact little sink-shower-and-toilet bathroom.  He climbs up, walks to the door, and knocks twice.

“Uh, Marinette?” he calls over the noise.  “Your mother said that lunch was ready.”

He waits a moment for a response.  When none is forthcoming, he shrugs and turns.

Marinette, her soaking hair dripping down to just below her shoulders, clutches a towel to her in frozen horror, her very blue eyes—yes, Adrien, that’s good, keep focusing on that—growing wider by the second.

“Uh,” Adrien manages to stammer out as he whirls to face the bathroom door.  “Why are you—“

“Towel,” Marinette squeaks.  “Forgot.”

For a few seconds, the only sound in the room is the quiet _tap tap tap_ of water plunking to the floor.  Adrien tries desperately not to think of precisely where it’s dripping from.

“Um,” Marinette says.  “C-Can I get by you?  I need to finish my shower.”

Adrien takes one smart step to the side and fixes his stare on the windows as Marinette pads past him, opens the bathroom door, and slips inside.  She shuts the door with a quiet click.

The noise jolts him back to sensibility and he scrambles for the stairs.

Thankfully, Sabine doesn’t question why both he and Marinette are flushed a Ladybug red and why they refuse to meet one another’s eyes over lunch.

After lunch, Adrien loses count.

Incident number four happens when they open the proofer and find that Marinette’s dough from that morning hasn’t risen properly.  Tom runs through a checklist with her, then, frowning, pinches off a piece and tastes it.

“How much salt did you put in here?” he asks Marinette.

“Two hundred grams,” Marinette says promptly.  Tom pinches off another piece and hands it to her.  Marinette pops it in her mouth and spits it out a second later.

“Exactly,” he tells her.  “Go and toss it, then help Adrien with the dough for tomorrow.”

“Yes, Papa,” Marinette says, and scurries off with the bowl in her arms.

Incident number five happens as Tom’s correcting Adrien on the finer points of the use of the bread peel.

“No, no, you’ll lose it that way,” Tom says, then stops a curse halfway through as the baguette tumbles from the peel, bounces off of the oven door, and rolls halfway into the fire.  Tom grabs it and with lightning speed, tosses the barely smoldering baguette into the air, catching it on the way down.

“Don’t—ow,” he tells Adrien as he sets it aside, “try—blast—that at home—ow.”

Tom darts sideways, slaps the sink’s cold water tap on, and shoves his hand under the icy stream.  He glances sideways at Marinette, who’s loading up the mixing bowl with flour.  His eyes widen.

“Mari, don’t,” he calls, but the warning makes her jump, and the better part of the bag drops into the bowl.

“Papa?” Marinette says, turning to face him.

Tom sighs.  “Check the label,” he says.  She does, and blanches.  “Right,” Tom says.  “Constance, take the rest of it, see what you can make of it.  Marinette, fetch the wheat gluten.”

Constance bustles over, takes the bag from Marinette with a sympathetic pat on the back and a murmured word of encouragement, and bustles off again to the other side of the kitchen, where a second, smaller mixer whirrs away merrily.

“Adrien, pop quiz,” Tom says, shutting off the water and drying his hands.  “Bread flour, cake flour, what’s the difference.”

“Bread flour has a higher gluten content,” Adrien says, eyes fixed on Marinette as she returns with a bag in her hands.  She seems a little smaller than she’d been earlier.

“How do you turn cake flour into bread flour?”

“Add gluten,” Adrien says.

“Right.  Mari, how much gluten per?”

“Um, um,” Marinette says, frantically searching for the answer.  She gives up after a minute.  “I don’t know, Papa,” she mumbles.

“Don’t worry,” Tom says.  “There’s a reason I keep that conversion table somewhere.”

Adrien tunes Tom out as Marinette shrinks in on herself further.

And so on and so forth, mishap after mistake after mishap, until even Tom’s patience has run a tad low.

“Mari,” he says gently, around five-thirty in the evening, once Marinette’s ruined another practice batch of croissant dough.  “Why don’t you go up and help your mother with dinner?”

“Yes, Papa,” Marinette mumbles, in such a defeated tone that Adrien feels his arms twitch into hugging position almost before he can stop them.  She trudges off upstairs.

“Um, Tom?” Adrien asks as Tom cleans up Marinette’s mess and takes out some fresh butter and dough.

“Yes, son?”

“Is she all right?” he says, with a glance up at the stairs.

Tom rolls the dough flat with a long cylinder of hardwood, then pauses.

“You ever practice calligraphy, son?” he says.

“No, Tom.”

“Sabine used to, back when we were in university.”  Tom’s face hazes over briefly with recollection.

Adrien waits.  This seems important.

“Anyways,” Tom says after a few seconds, returning to the here and now, “the trick to it is to find a spot sort of in between.  Between too much tension, you know”—he slaps his forearm in demonstration—“and too little.  Too little and you lose all control, and too much and you can’t flow properly.”

Adrien waits some more.

“This may not be my place,” Tom says, slapping the butter down in the middle of the flattened disc of dough, “but my daughter, shall we say, _admires_ you greatly.  And, well, everyone’s a little eager to impress the people they admire.”

Adrien is quiet for a moment more.  Finally he says, “If you want me to leave, Tom—"

“None of that,” Tom says.  “Martyrs, I swear.  She’ll get used to having you around.  Now, hush and pay attention.”

* * *

Tom, of course, insists that he stay for dinner.  Adrien insists that he doesn’t want to trouble them; Sabine comes down and stares at him until he changes his mind.

Dinner is as awkward an affair as lunch was.

Adrien sits next to Sabine, facing Marinette across the table.  Well, facing is a relative term; the both of them keep their eyes fixed on the table, and the only parts of each other that they see are their hands and wrists as they reach out to pluck dumplings and sautéed vegetables and other sundry foodstuffs from the plates spread across the table.

Adrien accepts a bowl of fried rice from Sabine and scoops a spoonful into his mouth.  His eyes widen in pleasant surprise.

“Wow,” he says, looking at Sabine, “this is really good.  This is _really_ , really good.  You’re an amazing cook, Sabine.”

Sabine smiles pleasantly at him.  “I didn’t make it,” she informs him with a calm smile.  She nods slightly in Marinette’s direction.  “Marinette did.”

“Wow,” Adrien blurts.  
  
Sabine nods and smiles at them.  “Didn’t even have her mind on it,” she says airly.  “Talking away with me the entire time, moved like a natural.  Just think of what she could do when she puts her mind to it.”

Adrien’s inner Chat Noir rises to the fore before he can stop it.  “Marry me,” he says, before diving back into the bowl.

When he lowers the bowl again, it’s to hear Tom and Sabine sniggering, and to see Marinette trying to sink beneath the table.

* * *

After dinner, the Gorilla drives him back.  Nathalie is waiting for him in the entrance hall, ready to scold him for the sudden change to his schedule, but he tunes out the lecture with the ease of long practice and scarpers up to his room as soon as he can.  Adrien transforms the instant that Plagg is fed, and leaps out into the night.

He finds Marinette at their spot atop the Eiffel Tower.

“My Lady,” he greets her quietly as he settles down beside her.  He lets his tail wind casually around her waist.

She doesn’t bat it away, but instead sits still, hunched over, staring fixedly at her hands folded in her lap.

“Princess?” he says, leaning in a little closer, brow furrowing in concern.

“Don’t, Chat,” she says, the words stopping him as effectively as a steel vault door.

Still, there wasn’t anything built that the entropic power of Cataclysm couldn’t unmake or Murphy’s Law into uselessness.  Maybe a little of that strength was in its user, too.

“What’s wrong?” he says, scooching a little bit away from Marinette.  After another moment’s thought, he unwinds his tail as well, leaving only an empty arms-width gap of empty space and painted iron between them.

“Did you mean it?” Marinette asks.  “Tonight, at dinner?”

“Mean what?” Adrien asks.

It’s the wrong thing to say, evidently; Marinette slumps further, shrinking in on herself a little more.

“When you said that you’d marry me,” she says.  It sounds _wrong,_ something that small and feeble coming from Marinette.

Adrien chooses his words carefully this time.  “The more I think about it,” he says, “the more I think that all those fantasies that I had—well, have—about well, you and I aren’t realistic.”  He sighs.  “All those fantasies I had about being your knight in shining armor, about sweeping you off of your feet with some big romantic gesture, about”—he gestures vaguely—“yes, our marriage in some wonderful far-off future, those aren’t just going to happen because we want them to.”

He looks at her directly.  “I plan on being your friend,” he says, “first and foremost.  And I plan on being your friend for the rest of your life.  And maybe that involves us being in love, and getting married, and having a family.  But I think that that isn’t something that we can say with any confidence now.”

Marinette still doesn’t look up, but she nods, slowly and thoughtfully.  “Okay,” she says.  “Then”—she swallows and bites her lip—“do you mean the rest of it?”

“The rest of what?”

“All the flirting,” she says, her words coming faster and more frantically.  “All the visits.  The whole getting a job at the bakery thing, just to spend time with me, all of it, just all of it.”

“Princess, what’s all this about?” Adrien says.

“Are you in love with me or with Ladybug?” Marinette says.

Adrien just sits there for a second.  Then he starts to laugh, a low chuckle that billows up from his belly and booms in his chest.

“That’s,” he says in between bursts of giggling, “that’s it?  That’s it?”

He lets his tail wind about her waist again and scoots closely enough to lay his hand on her shoulder.  “Princess, I remember the exact moment I fell for you.  Care to guess?”

“Stop screwing around, Chat—“

“All right, all right,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender.  “It was when,” he says, expression hazing over in dreamy recollection, “you were down and upset and so sure that you couldn’t ever win.  And then in one instant”—he chuckles and grins wider—“you decided that none of that mattered.  You clawed your way up from the pits of despair and decided that no matter how little you could do you would do it.”

He gives a little tilt of his head towards her.  “That’s you,” he says.  “All the way through.  Miraculous or not.  And that’s what I love.”

Marinette turns her head and stares at him for a long while.  Then she reaches up, tugs his arm around her shoulders, and scoots close enough to lay her head on his shoulder.

“You are such a sap,” she mutters.

“Your sap,” he says.

“So the whole job thing?” she asks after a while.

“I don’t want to be my father’s son,” Adrien says after a pause.  “I don’t want to just be his for the rest of my life.  This was part of that.”  He shrugs the shoulder Marinette’s head isn’t resting on.  “Something mine.”

“Okay,” Marinette says.

“When we have a moment,” he adds after a minute with a mild tremolo, “would you allow me to take you out?  Someplace nice.  Our first official date.”

“Official?”

“I consider these nights to be rather _informal_ dates,” he says with a disarming smile.

Before Marinette can answer, something explodes in the distance; Adrien can faintly pick up on the echoes of unhinged, manic laughter.  They sigh and stand, stretching and cracking joints.

“Well, chalk up another date, then,” Marinette says.

They leap away into the night.


End file.
